Syracuse, Texas join Kansas, Marquette in New Orleans
ALBANY, N.Y. – Usually, as teams march across the bracket toward the middle, reality has set in. Those early-round upset winners have been eliminated. The surprise element is gone. The power conference teams have flexed their muscles.
We’re left with top-seeded chalk, which is acceptable. The strongest teams during the regular season typically are the same at the end of March.
But once in a while, the NCAA Tournament delivers a curve and a unique story line. The 2003 Final Four is one of those years.
Kansas against Marquette and Texas against Syracuse isn’t a knee-buckling breaker, but enough of an unexpected gathering that tickets, hotel rooms and plane reservations are changing hands at this moment.
Those cancellations are coming from Kentucky, Arizona and Oklahoma. Pittsburgh, Wake Forest and Florida had extra time to seek refunds.
The lone top seed headed to New Orleans is Texas, which hasn’t been in the national semifinals since 1947, long before it was called a Final Four.
The three others all took out top seeds in regional finals, which speaks to the remarkable balance in college basketball and perpetuates the idea that the selection committee did a poor job seeding teams this year.
Second-seeded Kansas, champion of the nation’s strongest conference, should have been a No. 1. Marquette, which had the best league record and won the Conference USA tournament, probably was underseeded at No. 3. Same for Syracuse, which matched Pittsburgh for the best record in the Big East.
The Final Four is left with a No. 1, a No. 2 and a pair of threes. It’s only the ninth time since the seeding process began and the first time since 2000 that only one top seed has pushed through.
As the games approach, this Final Four will take its shape from three men who have been head coaches for a total of 58 years and do not have a national championship among them.
Kansas’ Roy Williams is in his 15th season, and Texas’ Rick Barnes is in his 16th. It’s the 27th season for Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim.
In his fifth season at Texas, Barnes his making his first Final Four trip. He had been to the Sweet 16 with the Longhorns and Clemson and was a postseason regular at Providence.
Final Four veterans Williams and Boeheim each seek their first title, and both have memories of New Orleans.
Williams was a North Carolina assistant in 1982 when the Tar Heels defeated Georgetown, giving coach Dean Smith his first national title. In 1993, Williams had been Kansas’ coach for four years when he took the Jayhawks to the Final Four for the second time.
Kansas fell to North Carolina in the national semifinals on a NCAA Tournament trip that was known for spitting in the Mississippi River. The superstition worked for the Tar Heels in 1982, and Williams had his players spit for luck in 1993.
Boeheim was just plain unlucky at the Superdome in 1987. His first Final Four trip ended when Indiana’s Keith Smart buried a 17-foot jumper in the final seconds and gave the Hoosiers a one-point victory.
After the Orangemen beat Oklahoma in the East final on Sunday, Boeheim was asked about ghosts in New Orleans. The city and the visit were terrific, Boeheim said, except for 4 seconds.
A sentimental favorite? Plenty from which to choose.
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AP-NY-03-30-03 2048EST
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